Christmas Lights in 2024

So this is the second year that I have used the smart plugs to track our electricity use for our Christmas lights. The Late Late Toy Show was a bit later this year than in previous years so instead of putting the decorations up the day before, we put them up a week before which was just about the end of November.

We have the same setup as previous years: LED string lights on the tree, a light up star for the top, battery powered net lights for the front window, battery powered candles, a light up Santa, and an inflatable Santa. The schedules I had set were to have them come on around 4PM and then turn off around midnight.

The lights on the star eventually stopped working but I was able to use a different set of lights and wrapped them around the star instead. These new lights used three AA batteries instead of the 2 AAA batteries which meant I didn't have to change them as much but the downside was there was no timer function on these lights.

The table below shows the totals over the few months with the grand total being 8.678kWh. At the rate of 33c per kWh (my current tariff) this would have cost €2.89.

Paula is talking about getting lights for the outside of the house for next year so we will hve to see how much of an impact that might have.

Paddy